How Domestic Varieties Originate 



241 



the attention of all interested persons is directed to looking 

 for similar variations amongst their own plants. 



12. The person who is wishing for new varieties should 

 look critically to all perennial plants, and particularly to 

 trees and shrubs, for bud-varieties or sports. It has 

 already been said that the branches of a tree may vary 

 among themselves in the same way in which seedlings 



FIG. 59. Curled kale. Brassica oleracea var. acephala. 



vary, and for the same reason. As a rule, any marked 

 sport is capable of being perpetuated by bud-propagation. 

 The number of bud-varieties now in cultivation is really 

 very large. Many of the cut-leaved and colored or 

 variegated varieties of ornamental plants were originally 

 found on other trees as sports. The "mixing in the 

 hill" of potatoes is bud-variation. Nectarines are de- 

 rived from the peach, some of them as sports and some as 

 seedlings. The moss-rose was probably originally a sport 



